Carnegie Mellon To Host Smart Grid Research Center

Carnegie Mellon will host a new Smart Grid Research Center as part of a $5 million industry-academic partnership with the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), the world's leading university-industry research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies.

The new partnership, dubbed the Energy Research Initiative (ERI), will team companies from across the energy-related spectrum with university researchers to address the world's need for smart alternative energy sources and prepare students with the technical skills required for the new burgeoning industry. The ERI, managed by the SRC subsidiary The Energy Research Corp. (TERC), will initially address two critical areas for efficient generation and distribution of renewable energy resources: photovoltaics and systems engineering and technologies to enable and optimize smart grids. The latter will be housed in the Smart Grid Research Center at Carnegie Mellon.

"The Smart Grid Research Center at Carnegie Mellon will support the incorporation of renewable energy resources and provide modeling, simulation and control tools needed to manage, optimize and secure the power grid,'' said Ed Schlesinger, head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Marija Ilic, a professor of ECE and engineering and public policy and director of the university's Electric Energy Systems Group, will direct the Smart Grid Research Center.

The partnership is already making news, with an article appearing on the Wall Street Journal's blog this morning. To read the release from SRC, click here. To read the university's official press release, click here.